revista anglo saxonica ser. iii n. 11 2016

212 Pages·2016·0.61 MB·English

by  Ines Mateus

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ANGLO SAXONICA
SER.III N.11 2016
DIRECÇÃO / GENERAL EDITORS
Isabel Fernandes (ULICES)
João Almeida Flor (ULICES)
Mª Helena Paiva Correia (ULICES)
Teresa Cid (ULICES)
COORDENAÇÃO / EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Teresa Malafaia (ULICES)
EDITORES ADJUNTOS / ASSISTANT EDITORS
Ana Cristina Mendes (ULICES)
Carla Larouco Gomes (ULICES)
REVISÃO DE TEXTO / COPY EDITORS
Ana Cristina Mendes (ULICES)
Carla Larouco Gomes (ULICES)
EDIÇÃO Centro de Estudos Anglísticos da Universidade de Lisboa
University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies
DESIGN, PAGINAÇÃO E ARTE FINAL Inês Mateus
IMPRESSÃO E ACABAMENTO
SerSilito
TIRAGEM 150 exemplares
ISSN 0873-0628
DEPÓSITO LEGAL 86 102/95
Este trabalho é financiado por Fundos Nacionais através da FCT – Fundação para
a Ciência e a Tecnologia no âmbito do projeto PEst-OE/ELT/UI0114/2013
To the Memory of Laura Fernanda Bulger /
À Memória de Laura Fernanda Bulger
(23rd May 1939–25th February 2015)

Introductory note
ISSN: 0873-0628 ANGLO SAXONICA SER. III N.11 2016

Introductory note
This issue is dedicated to Laura Fernanda Bulger as a tribute to her
life and work and in appreciation of her lifelong commitment to
fostering mutual knowledge and understanding across the Atlantic,
particularly between her native and her adopted country, respectively
Portugal and Canada.
Born in Lisbon on 23rdMay 1939, Laura Fernanda Bulger spent her
childhood and youth in her native city, before moving to Toronto with her
Canadian husband, John Bulger, and returning to Portugal thirty years
later, living first in Porto and Vila Real and returning later to her birthplace
where she spent her later years and died on 25thFebruary 2015. A citizen
of the world, her attachment to Lisbon’s charms, its hills and streets, light
and river, was laced with childhood memories of neutral wartime Lisbon
and with youthful memories of the parochial atmosphere of the capital of
the empire that Salazar held on to against all odds. These early memories,
absorbed with a child’s keen attention to sounds, silences and gazes, to the
said as much as to the unsaid, and her adult exposure to the “new world”
of Canada and North America, found a way into her intellectual curiosity
and academic interests.
Having completed her secondary education in 1962, during the next
three years Laura studied English and German Philology at the Faculty of
Letters, University of Lisbon. Married in 1966, Laura and John Bulger
settled in Toronto, Ontario, where she proceeded with her studies at the
University of Toronto and obtained her B.A. in 1970 and her M.A. in
1976. In 1989 she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Porto, Portugal,
with an influential thesis on the work of the Portuguese writer Agustina
Bessa Luís, subsequently published as A Sibila: Uma superação inconclusa
[The Sybil: An Inconclusive Overcoming], and awarded the Eça de
Queiroz Literature Prize for essay. In the late 1980s, the Bulgers settled in
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REVISTA ANGLO SAXONICA
northern Portugal, and Laura took up a post as Assistant Professor at the
University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, Vila Real. She embraced
this new stage of her life with renewed energy and commitment and would
earn her Habilitation in 2003. While in Canada she had assisted the
Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Culture in drafting the curriculum
on Multiculturalism and had been involved in promoting Portuguese
language and culture, both by collaborating in setting up Portuguese
Studies at York University, and by liaising between Portuguese and
Canadian entities to organize countless events showcasing Portuguese
literature and cinema. Back in Portugal Laura Bulger not only continued
to bring her insight into contemporary Portuguese literature, but also took
it upon her to make Canadian literature and culture better known among
us. In the process, she brought her experience of living between cultures
to bear on her reflections on multiculturalism and postcolonialism, and
her interest in literary theory stretched to include intermediality, as
indicated by her Habilitation and later publications.
Indeed, Laura Bulger’s transplantation from Salazar’s Portugal to
Pierre Trudeau’s Canada must have proven as challenging as it was
liberating, and it expanded her horizons in unexpected ways: not only was
she exposed to the sheer vastness, as well as the linguistic, ethnic, and
cultural diversity of Canada, but her involvement with the Portuguese
community in Ontario, which at the time largely came from remote and
impoverished areas in the Azores islands or inland Portugal, also faced her
with bleak aspects of their shared native country that the urban Laura had
so far been spared. Canada thus added vastness, nuance, and depth to her
understanding of home and the challenges of belonging, and plunged her
in the midst of debates on multiculturalism and how to negotiate the
multiple legacies of colonialism and immigration. These concerns with in-
betweenness would find their way into her academic writing as well as into
her fiction, namely her short-story collection Vaivém (1986), translated
into English as Paradise on Hold(1987).
In her later years, Laura Fernanda Bulger moved back to Lisbon and
participated with zest in its civic and intellectual life. After her retirement
in 2010, her curiosity unabated, she continued to read, write, and attend
conferences, and generously accepted our invitations to share her
knowledge of Canadian literature and culture with graduate and